This is a story about social gaffes...

The world is a minefield. A misplaced foot - even in one's own mouth - could see you blown to smithereens. Safely and successfully navigating the maze of human relationships, to reach the prize of friendship, is a nigh-on impossible task for those who are prone to make innocent blunders, as I often am. It is my curse; my life's biggest hardship - that my best intentions are misconstrued and people are offended.

I am eager to impress and please the people who I meet. I do, after all, sit behind a computer screen for most of my life, and have limited opportunity for real face-to-face social interaction. Should it not be expected that I would stumble and err in the real-world environment that is almost alien to me? It sounds as though I am making excuses for my behaviour, which I am.

When we meet, I will judge you for your terrible fashion sense, the dregs of your regional accent, the uncouth behaviour that belies your lack of good breeding. "I shan't be inviting this prole to the polo club" I often think to myself, as I smile and make pleasant smalltalk with the hoi polloi, who stray across my path.

If - God forbid - you should invite me into your home, I will be making a mental inventory of everything I find to be in bad taste. I doubt a single drop of Farrow & Ball paint has touched your walls. If you don't have a picture rail AND a dado rail in every room, you might as well just bulldoze the whole house.

Apparently, some people are not as appreciative as they should be, when I offer to elevate them from the disgusting squalor and odious personal appearance that holds them back from entering high society. Even a turd can be polished, but yet some people are resistant and even hostile towards my well-meaning comments.

I often imagine that I may be beatified at some future point, for my services rendered to the tasteless individuals who I have selflessly tried to help. However, it often feels like a futile task which has made me few friends. I have even been struck from the Christmas card list of many of the individuals who I've tried to help.

The world is a strange and confusing place.

Tags: #friends

This is a story about hurt feelings...

Let's just be nice to each other. We're all soft and squishy and vulnerable on the inside.

I'm one of the good guys - I value friendships & loyalty, and I wouldn't abuse my tech superpowers for malicious purposes. I just want us all to get along, man. Peace out, brother.

Tags: #suicide #friends #relationships

This is a story about all-night fun and frolics...

I had an interview today. I mean yesterday. I made a new friend last Wednesday, or was it Thursday? Once you go past midnight, things get complicated.

I lead a follow-the-sun existence. During the morning, I'm saying good night to my friends in Australia and New Zealand. As the day wears on, it's bedtime for my friends in India and other parts of Asia. At around noon, I say good morning to my friends on the East Coast of North America, and at about 3pm I say good morning to my friends on the the West Coast - we chat all day, all evening, into the night. Then, my friends in the Czech Republic, Italy and France remind me that it's almost my own bedtime, but I skipped my medication: I'll sleep when I'm dead. By the time 5am comes around, those friends in Canada and the United States are starting to think about getting some sleep themselves... but for friends in New Zealand and Australia, it's a whole new day. It's only me who hasn't been to bed and is getting confused about whether it's today or tomorrow.

I keep skipping my medication, so that I can be alert and on top of my game for job interviews. Without a job, I'm going to be bankrupt in no time. I'm already being turfed out of my apartment without getting a penny of my deposit back. Where am I going to live? How am I supposed to feed myself?

This isn't supposed to happen. I have mood stabilisers. I have sleeping pills. I have strict instructions to keep to the same bedtime every night and not to over-sleep: 8 to 10 hours is plenty, which will make many parents grit their teeth with envy. Under normal circumstances, I live a heavily medicated existence where I shuffle around and speak frustratingly slowly. The hospital staff who visit me at home to check on me are happy to see me in that state: I should be no trouble to anybody, in that chemical straightjacket.

I did take my pills tonight, probably more than 12 hours late. I doubled up on the sleeping pills, but I practically wrote the book on sleep deprivation. I can tell you exactly what happens after 3 or 4 days, then 6 or 7 days without sleep. After 9 days of 24-hour consciousness and not so much as a snooze, I can give you an approximate description of what this state of sleeplessness is like. At the 10 day point, who knows if or when I'll regain consciousness - psychosis consumes anybody who didn't sleep for as long as 10 days. Calendars and days of the week become as alien to me as a smartphone would be to an Amazonian tribe who've remained completely undiscovered in the densest and most inaccessible jungle.

I've been packing up my stuff, and I found some headphones I really love and an amplifier for them. I used to dance at all-night raves and club nights. I might not have been writing my blog so much, but I was having important online conversations. I decided I did't want to die angry with the world, so I started writing more conciliatory words; I started writing to say "thanks" instead of "f**k you buddy". All this while, I'm listening to music that I hadn't been able to stand because none of it matched my mood; none of the lyrics spoke to me; there was nothing I could relate to.

The last happy thing I remember doing with her was watching the sequel to Trainspotting. We were both buzzing. Reading - the town - was a special place for us both and the music festival in 1996 is where I watched Trainspotting in the cinema tent, and then heard Underworld play Born Slippy in the dance tent. The soundtrack to the movie got us both listening to the classic tunes and their modern remixes, and speculating about the meaning of the lyrics.

Dirty numb angel boy

And tears boy

And all in your inner space boy

You had chemicals boy

I've grown so close to you

She said come over

She smiled at you boy.

I then decided to repurpose a song I liked into a poem for her.

The poem is a sad goodbye if you like. I got the job. I'm leaving the city where we currently live. I'm leaving all those reminders of a time when I thought we'd be together forever, and she'd look after me if I got sick, and vice-versa.

Summer Break-Up

A thousand words
captured in a photograph
of me and you
drinking prosecco on the grass
so hard to breathe
the way you made me laugh.

That summer dating
ended all right
seemed like you would be
the only one for me
and seemed like I was too
the only one for you.

Later when we were alone
we promised everything we owned
and every little bit of me
tingled excitedly
this thing was so right
was exactly what it felt like
how could it go wrong?
now it's all gone.

People told me all the time
that love is just a state of mind
but they don't know love's hard to find
and that's why I'm not changing mine.

Yesterday
I called you up
the hundredth try
and I'm still out of luck
your number changed
and I guess so did you.

But I'm not the same little
helpless dying flower
that you nurtured and saved
because now I do believe
that inside of me
you set me free.

When I see your picture, I smile
because I think of you happier
without my weight on your shoulders
I must take my wings and soar
but I've never felt afraid like this before

It's 7am now. I'm going to get a couple of hours of sleep. I've probably been writing complete drivel, and I don't want to upset her. I did promise her that we'd leave each other alone to move on with our lives, but I lied... I felt like I was going to die. I just had to hope she'd never find out I'd killed myself. Now, there's a chance that things could work out for me, and I could get a fresh start; a new challlenge to hurl myself into to forget all about love and heartbreak for a while.

Time is a great healer, and if you're awake 24 hours a day, you're living about 33% more than everybody else, but you don't get over a breakup any quicker.

Sleep is also a great healer, so to bed, I must.

Tags: #relationships

This is a story about changing beyond recognition...

This 25 year old Londoner was hopelessly addicted to kitesurfing, and had secured a job in Bournemouth, where he would work mornings and evenings, leaving his afternoons free to go to the beach. Working for a huge international organisation, he had secured a ludicrously good deal - salary and relocation allowance - and the Human Resources (HR) people who he negotiated with had no idea that the real prize was to be able to kitesurf every day.

Despite being confident and outgoing, he was hiding crushing insecurities about his attractiveness to the opposite sex - a complete lack of self-esteem - and was struggling to find the girl of his dreams, who would be the cherry on top of a lovely cake. Being a hopeless romantic, and pretty inexperienced despite his 25 years on this Earth, he could fall in love at the drop of a hat and be heartbroken when a simple fling didn't turn into anything more serious.

Overcoming his ineptitude with women, he got together with a girl who looked perfect on paper and she was a pretty and petite blonde. He was smitten. She was a science graduate and a computer programmer. She even worked for a client that he'd worked for 6 years before, and he knew many of her colleagues.

In the words of one of his best friends, she was a "conversion project". He would teach her to kitesurf, and then they could travel the world together, chasing warm wind, soft sand and water that was mirror flat or had perfect waves. Brazil, Venezuela, Cape Verde, South Africa, The Canary Islands... there was an endless list of exciting countries to visit with this beautiful girl, and kitesurf together.

There she was, giving it a damn good go in Poole Harbour, under his tuition. Why she was wearing a buoyancy aid in water that's so shallow you can stand up in it, was anybody's guess, but I guess it made her feel more confident. Kitesurfing in those days was super dangerous - the emergency release mechanisms were just being developed, and if you let go of the bar, you'd be dragged along out of control, like being tied to the back of a speedboat being driven by a maniac, until you crashed into one of those harbourside houses.

After a year, he decided to propose. He asked her dad's permission. He did all the things that he thought he should do: buy a house, get married, get a pet, have kids. Thankfully - for the kids' sake - they stopped short of doing that last one. Just looking after their a cat had a very strong bonding effect. Their cat is probably the reason they stayed together as long as they did.

They got married in Hawaii, of course. He was allowed to wear flip flops, but not board shorts. In fact, he had a tough time from bridezilla for almost the whole trip until he put his foot down and said he just wanted to sit by the pool or on the beach, drinking ice cold beverages. She wanted to be sightseeing in a decrepit camper van that they weren't insured to drive. He checked them into a luxury hotel, which cost a small fortune - it was Christmas time after all - and finally, for a brief moment, he had a tiny bit of holiday relaxation.

Notably, they didn't take their kites or kiteboards. Travelling with a wedding dress and linen suit was a teeny bit difficult, but not as hard as lugging a 30kg bag that's nearly as tall as person. However, Hawaii has wind, waves. warm water and beautiful sandy beaches. Barely a few hundred metres from where Barack Obama was spending his holiday break, our missing young man was forced to try pole dancing (windsurfing) for the first time, in desperation to get his 'fix'. There was the shame and indignity of being a beginner windsurfer he was an experienced kitesurfer in a paradise location, who could have been having the time of his life.

After landing at London Heathrow, after over 20 hours of flight time, it turned out that his new wife had used an online booking website to arrange the taxi home, but had not accounted for the fact that they would be away over New Year's Eve. An innocent mistake, but it left them stranded, exhausted, in the middle of the night.

Within a month, he was in private hospital. It was all too much for him. She would rage and throw tantrums when things didn't go her way. He would bite his tongue and try to fix everything. The pressure to please her was unbearable... but it was never enough. He'd bought her a hot tub because she said she had loved having one in California. He'd shown her the world, staying in the best hotels and eating in the best restaurants. He'd married her in one of the most romantic destinations you could ever choose, and he'd even agreed not to wear board shorts. She was threatening divorce while he was sending her a different flower every day, from hospital, to show he still loved her. Despite him being a generous lover, she was on 'no strings attached' dating websites, looking for sex.

If crêpes Suzette, flambéed at your table, with the best views of any restaurant in Malta, is not enough to whisk a girl of her feet, he was left bamboozled as to how he could possibly please her. He was completely naïve, believing that if he treated her like a princess, she would love him as much as he loved her. He was wrong. It hurt and he was heartbroken.

It made no sense. People would come to their summer garden parties and be served home-made burgers and marinated chicken, plus endless varieties of sausages hot off the barbecue, while a range of delicious salads that she had prepared, were laid on for the vegetarians and to garnish the plates with. Fire pits and patio heaters kept people warm after the sun went down, and there was the hot tub kept at a toasty 38 degrees (100 degrees Fahrenheit).

It made no sense. People would come out for trips on his boat to see one of the largest natural harbours in the world. Him and his wife were a natural host and hostess. They were a great team when they were entertaining guests.

For her birthday one year, he took her in his boat up the Wareham River, moored up outside The Priory Hotel, and they ate lunch on the patio, which was some of the finest dining in Dorset - cooked by Michelin star standard chefs - with beautifully manicured lawns leading down to the river bank.

Why they quarrelled and grew apart is a mystery. She wanted to learn to sail and he was an RYA dinghy sailing instructor and experienced yacht skipper. She wanted to rock climb and he had the qualifications and experience to teach her. She wanted to climb mountains, and he had spent months in the high Alps and was a mountain leader (guide) experienced in dealing with emergencies, working with groups of varying ability, and acclimatising to altitude. He taught her how to snowboard and was grinning from ear to ear when she followed him off piste without a moment of hesitation.

However, he was baffled and slightly insulted that she spent a lot of money to go and learn from other people. He'd taken her sailing multiple times, and taught her a lot. He'd taken her rock climbing, and shown her the ropes; pardon the pun. He'd taken her into the mountains and shown her the basics of navigation, safety, route planning and even how to retreat when things don't go to plan. That's our missing man and his ex-wife, in every picture above except the mountain one. where he's the one taking taking the photo.

He was, undoubtably, looking for the love of his life, but married the wrong person. Friends warned him that him & her weren't a good match. "The poison dwarf" was too hot to handle, especially for a sensitive guy who was relatively inexperienced with women and still nurtured the Disney "happily ever after" idea of finding true love. He mounted a kindness offensive - an attempt to satisfy her every whim, her every ambition, but yet it still wasn't enough. He was delicate. She was aggressive.

It made him sick - mentally unwell - all this arguing and rejection. He wanted to just grab her and squeeze her tight until she felt safe and loved. Maybe that was the problem: she felt trapped and smothered. They met when she was only 23, which I guess is quite young, considering that he proposed when she was only 24. For their parents' generation, that would not have been unusual, and he did things the old fashioned way: buying a house to start a family. However, she complained she hadn't seen enough of the world; experienced enough of life's adventures. He set out to rectify this, but what she was really saying is "I'm not ready to be a one-dick woman just yet".

His best friend coined the phrase "conversion project", which is to take a girl and turn her into a kitesurfer; a sailor, a climber; a mountaineer. This friend literally asked "are you ready to be a one vagina man?". Soon after that, this friend went on a trip to sow his wild oats across Scandinavia, before coming home to marry the poor girl who'd had to tolerate this temporary break-up in the full knowledge that his motive was completely unreasonable. They're a happy couple with twins and a lovely house now, so maybe he was right. At the time, his wife wanted to punch his friend in the face or testicles, or probably both.

Before his petite blonde wife, the happy smiling 25 year old - pictured when our story began - had tried to make it work with a kitesurfer who lived 186 miles away, and nowhere near the sea. He'd tried to make it work with other kitesurfer girls too. An incredibly beautiful Burmese kitesurfer girl seemed to be flirting with him when she was on holiday with him in Sardinia, but he was so shy and inexperienced, he didn't dare try to kiss her.

Our missing man tried to make it work with his wife, again and agan and again and again, and eventually it broke him. He broke down and sank into depression, bipolar disorder, alcohol abuse and made a stupid mistake which was his ultimate demise: the abuse of legal highs. This was the beginning of the end.

In the chaos, confusion, stress and trauma of divorce, selling his house, saving his most precious possessions, leaving the town he'd called home for 8 years and all his friends... all mixed in with toxic additives like mental health problems, addiction and alcoholism, he was a little lost boy. He's been missing for nearly 11 years. There have been times when somebody who appeared to be him popped up briefly, but like an apparition, he melted away into nothingness again.

Is it any wonder that he disappeared? He gave so much of himself away - his love - trying to make relationships work; trying to make girls feel special and cherished and loved and like princesses; trying to please; loving unconditionally.

This blog contains the bitterness; the accusations of wrongdoing - the evidence of the inexcusable and terrible behaviour that was perpetrated against the author. This blog tells the story of why that young man went missing, and why he's still missing. Perhaps why he'll never be found. If he's missing, perhaps, you shouldn't search for him.

Perhaps there's no place in this world for a naïve little boy who has so much love to give, but nobody to give it to. So many times in life he was left reeling, hurt and wondering what he did wrong, when all he tried to do was to be as nice as he could possibly be. Perhaps that silly little boy got it all wrong, and life's not about being nice and kind to people; it's about using people and getting what you want at all costs. The boy was not made for this world - he was like an alien from another planet.

Look at this old man. Look at the sadness that he tries to hide, but something in his eyes betrays him. He knows he's nothing like that happy smiling 25 year old young man, photographed 12 years ago. He knows that all the kings horses and all the kings men couldn't put him back together again. He knows that whatever it was that happened, it damaged him badly. Unconditional love, infectious happiness, a sense of contentment and the enthusiastic exuberance that characterised our missing little lost boy, are qualities that this old man doesn't possess - they're completely different people.

It's a tragedy when we lose somebody who brought fun & excitement, adventure & exhilaration, thrills & spills, into people's lives. It's a tragedy when many lives are touched - improved - and then we lose that person.

I don't think we'll ever find him though. He's gone forever.

Tags: #relationships #depression #bipolar #mentalhealth #alcohol #drugs #suicide

This is a story about gratitude...

In happier times, I could cycle through a tunnel under the River Thames to go and see her. During a blissfully warm Indian summer, we courted on the hills above the capital, enjoying spectacular panoramic views across London: far better than even my overpriced central London apartment can provide. Sipping Prosecco out of plastic glasses and eating Marks & Spencer finger food, it was clear that our borderline alcoholism and gluttony made us a well-matched pair, or so it seemed as we muddled through the tail end of summer, autumn and the winter.

This is not a portmortem of our relationship. If anybody was looking for that, including her, I would hope they'd read So Lonely, which gives some insight into my half of the story of our breakup: a story that would never get told to her mum, brother, best friends and work colleagues. Instead, I'm a pariah. No; worse... I have instigated protective instincts that only a short time before extended to me, as a loosely connected family member: her partner and somebody fully committed to a lifelong future together. Her brother hates me, I assume.

There's the unresolved issue of the fact that I loved that she had some association with politics, by fluke of her career, while I had made political matters the core of my thinking; political ideologies were the thing I most passionately believed in. When I write pieces which show that my thinking is ahead of the pack - unencumbered by the corrupting influence of living and working too close to the very elites who have grown apart from the electorate - I can't help but wonder what my former best friend, lover and lifelong partner, would have to say, with the benefit of her amazing intellect... but she also benefits from her privileged position of having to do nothing more than to turn up at an office each day, to soak up the status quo and entrenched beliefs of the Westminster bubble. I hoped she would read Labour's Catch 22, especially as it predated Graham Jones and Gloria De Piero's rebellion over Labour arrogance that Corbyn's popularity will be enough to sweep the party to power at the next general election.

Before continuing further, it's important to note that I'm boxing up my belongings, putting them into storage, and it's likely that I will be leaving this city of nearly 9 million inhabitants - where bumping into somebody you know is incredibly improbable - and she should know that I respect our agreement to leave each other in peace; to move on with our lives, despite the pain and heartache of a breakup. I could be in a city in the North of the country, or I could even be abroad: the chance that we should ever meet again is close to zero percent.

It should be noted that she used to read everything I wrote, proofread it, help edit it, provide feedback and even helped shaped the plot of my debut novel. This is the first thing I want to say thank you for doing, whether she reads this or not.

I'm doing this in a kind of reverse order of importance, so the next thing I'm thankful for is her tolerance and even good humour, over things that very few partners could be so kind and understanding about. She might not have understood what bath salts were at first; she might not have understood that I suffer from a dual diagnosis, which makes understanding me a whole lot harder than buying the Amazon bestseller on bipolar disorder, but she damn well did buy that book. By way of a comparison, my ex-wife bought the book "Nag your Loved one Sober". That epitomises of the difference between my relationship with my my ex-wife and a loving relationship.

The next thing I've got to give thanks for is how she listened & observed. My walls were bare even though I had a photo of nearly 20 of my best friends, a photo of me that reminds me I was a young cool kitesurfer dude once, and a photo of an animal I have always professed a desire to keep as a pet. The frames that hold these pictures were part of a Christmas bonanza of gifts that I'm now bursting into to tears thinking about. Not so much because of the thoughtful gifts - although this was without question the best Christmas of my adult life - but because I was brought into the fold of a bonded and caring family and received so much love, care and acceptance.

Early in the New Year, I secured a new IT contract. Sadly, I sat on my leg and caused a kind of crush injury normally only seen in car accidents and building collapses. My kidneys stopped working and I found myself as a high dependency case in hospital, on dialysis. She burnt herself out trying to look after me for weeks, but not only that, she marshalled the troops: my friends and her family, in order to make me feel loved and supported. In all the multiple hospitalisations I've suffered over the last few years, I'd never received a single get well card and one of only two visitors came to demand I returned a copy of the keys to his house after a suicide attempt [not in his house]. It's imperative that I thank her [and her family] for their efforts in returning me to good health, through love and support.

Apart from raccoons, squirrels are another animal that I'm mad about. I guess that, living in London, squirrels are a cute animal that has gotten so used to human contact that they come right up to you and take things out of your hands, if you pretend to have food for them. If you do have food for the squirrels, they'll crawl all over you and put up with a certain amount of petting, even though they're wild. With the collapse of my second attempt at domestic bliss - my marriage to my ex-wife - my cat had to go live with my parents, from whom I'm estranged. I'm thankful that she gave me a third period of domestic bliss, with Mr Squiz as our inanimate pet [who she bought for me]. The lovely bedclothes, quilt and pillows are all thanks to her. She made me feel loved, and that I could love again.

No domestic bliss is complete without the trimmings of high quality kitchenwares and other day-to-day luxury items. Everthing from my tatty tea towels to my budget Ikea cutlery received a quiet makeover. My cheap-brand supermarket goods were replaced with the best that Marks & Spencer and Waitrose have to offer the upper-middle-class consumer and I started to develop a penchant for lime cordial made with 30% Mexican limes... available exclusively in the top-tier supermarkets. The hoi polloi have never tasted such delicious concentrated drink products, nor have they used John Lewis' or Joseph & Joseph homewares... they haven't lived. I must be thankful to her - without even a hint of sarcasm - for giving me a simidgin of a taste of the finer things in life.

Our final quarel might seem rather ludicrous to you. It resulted in me slicing deep gashes into the length of my forearm and making footprints in my own blood, on her walls. The only thing you can really know from this is that I was incredibly unwell, but you could also infer that there was something that was deeply important to me, about whatever was going on. It's very hard to understand people who are in an extreme mental health crisis, but my crisis was deepened and exacerbated by her decision to try and ignore me. I had tried and failed to walk to the local shop - a very short distance away - wearing my Brazilian Havaiana flip-flops, but due to the aforementioned leg injury, my left foot is completely numb and I'm unable to even feel if my big toe has become dislocated, which it easily can because of damage to my tendons. This is all highly complicated, but you should know that I've spent months each year wearing those Brazilian flip flops, and they had become intricately linked to my identity. She had offered - a parting gift if you like - to buy me a pair of summer shoes, which I could wear with my numb left foot. The Camper shoes pictured offer a wide footbed, allowing my toes to spread naturally: otherwise I would have no idea if I was getting a blister on one side or the other of my foot. She will probably never understand how important these shoes were to me; nor how important it was that she at least humour me, when our relationship had fractured and virtually disintegrated. She seemingly made an overnight change in how much care and attention that she lavished on me, in what was supposed to be a love to last until our dying days. My final thank you is for something that looks purely cosmetic or materialistic, but she eventually had the faith to make a final pyrrhic effort and expense, which she would never see any benefit of, to get me those shoes. I wear those shoes every day and the quality of life improvement they have brought me would astound anybody who hasn't experienced partial loss of the use of a limb or extremity, and the loss of the choices they get to make about their attire. This is more than simple vanity: it's identity, which is tightly bound up with self-esteem.

To write the best part of 2,000 words, in thanks to a partner who you've promised - mutually - to never be in contact with ever again, seems to plumb the depths of insanity, but while she has her resurgent career, I've had a close shave with being hospitalised and have been visited at home every day by somebody checking to see if I'm still alive. I'm not saying it's been a cakewalk for her, but she hurled herself back into her career, which was both therapeutic as well as beneficial to her ongoing job aspirations.

I'm not completely insane, and I know from the analytics of my website when I've had a visitor which is her, in all likelihood. I want to honour our "no communication" and "move on with our lives" agreement, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't have have the evidence to show that somebody's had a peek to see if I'm still alive.

What I need to do is lick my wounds; to try to forgive myself for acts that were driven by mental illness; to try and accept that her choice to break our no-communication agreement was for the private swallowing of her pride and to publicly swallow her pride and for any reconciliation to take place, would be unthinkable when she thinks of herself as some kind of minor celebrity.

While that final paragraph might seem bitter and harsh, given the thankful tone of everything I've just written, perhaps it's just part of the baggage that I struggle with, alone. With any breakup, there will be unanswered questions and what ifs. With any breakup, it's hard not to look backwards until the next love of your life enters the picture. I really hope that nothing I've said would detract from my overall gratitude that I met her, shared time with her, had hope for the future with her, felt loved by her and ultimately had my life enriched by her.

It's rather tragic, but where in life can you say you don't find tragedy and regret: tragedy in what might have been if only things had played out slightly differently?

Tags: #relationships

This is a story about isolation...

I've had 3 attempts at living in domestic bliss in my lifetime.

The first attempt, I was way too young. At just 21 years old, what the hell did I think I was doing living in a Surrey commuter town? Taking the old slam-door train into Waterloo every day and having to ride "the drain" which is the packed tube that carries you directly into the heart of the City of London. I played golf on summer evenings and at weekends. I generally acted as if I was 50, not 21. Also, I was with the poor girl out of a desperate desire not to be alone, rather than because I was attracted to her, which is never a good reason to be with somebody. Our flat was nice enough, but somehow bland; faceless; soul-destroying. Leaving central London for that life, was a huge mistake.

The second attempt, I picked the wrong girl. I was certainly attracted to her, and she was smart - a science graduate from a good university - so she ticked almost every box. However, she was mean; just plain mean. There was a vicious aggressive streak to her and she managed to rub most people she met up the wrong way. My friends called her "the poison dwarf". We bought a suburban house and tried to make it work. Getting a kitten was the only thing that was successful - we bonded over looking after our cat. Perhaps - although reckless - there's something to be said for doing what my parents did, which is to have a child even though your relationship is a load of dog shit. I ended up marrying this girl. It did not last long. You can't pair a mean aggressive person with somebody who's a sensitive needy soul like myself: I'm fragile; I'm easily hurt, if you want to hurt me; I'm a pretty easy target - I'm open and unguarded.

The third attempt happened very naturally. Perhaps it's an age thing - we were both getting to the point where, how did she put it? "It's time to shit or get off the pot". She was very committed and I loved that - it made me feel so loved and secure; wrapped up in cotton wool. I'd look for her hand, and hers would be there, ready to hold mine. If I felt like I was going to fall, she'd reassure me that she was going to catch me. The thing is, I was broken and sick - there was so little left of me to love. I was ridiculously needy, but she seemed to take that in her stride and make incredible allowances and forgivenesses for all kinds of transgressions.

How it came to pass that my latest attempt at domestic bliss fell apart, I shan't go into the detail of out of respect for her, and an agreement to leave each other in peace. However, there are a couple of things that I need to write about, just because I need to clarify them in my own mind. There's a certain amount of lunacy that led to the downfall of that relationship, and I need to unpick it a bit... to untangle the mess.

We hadn't had an argument for months. We got along so well. We were best friends and we were mostly inseparable. She had social engagements, and I didn't suffer FOMO or jealousy. We got through a family Christmas and some other stressful times, without so much as a cross word. In a way, that made me feel uneasy. We were not well practiced at resolving conflict.

As my health failed and my career faltered, all of our optimistic dreams of the future were under threat. She was supportive, but I was losing what little identity and self esteem I had; I was becoming ever more dependent on her. It emerged that I was full of bitter regret that my path through life had led me away from interesting things, smart people, daily challenges: my career had become little more than stoically watching projects get bollocksed up by total morons, in return for obscene amounts of money - a bribe, if you like, to rubberstamp the wrongdoing I had to witness. Her career reminded me of everything I had ever aspired to do with my life - to make the world a better place.

I became deeply insecure. Not insecure because she left me with any doubt that she would be committed, loyal and supportive, no matter how bad things got. No... I was insecure about my worth; my value as a person; my contribution; my career choice; my ability to deliver on my end of the bargain of the domestic bliss dream. I was on a hair trigger.

She didn't know how to debate; how to argue, as it turned out. We still live in an age where sexism is working out its kinks, and our intellectual women have been excused from having to back their assertions with evidence or logic, or refute a point with a well constructed counter-argument. Contradiction was all she knew, and I had to walk away in frustration, the first few times we argued.

Because of my loneliness; my isolation, when we argued - over something that was deeply distressing to me - I turned to social media to arbitrate. I didn't know where else to turn. When you have the evidence in front of you, but somebody is arguing that black is white and refusing to back down, what do you do? To post up the transcript of an argument on Facebook, and let the crowd decide is not a great thing to do, but I was being tormented; driven mad.

I'm not really sure what happened afterwards. I was completely isolated and completely exposed. I had laid out my position: the irrefutable evidence. Maybe I needed the strength of the crowd behind me, to follow through and end a relationship with somebody who would put their intellectual vanity ahead of my feelings - be prepared to lie and twist the truth just to 'win' [in their mind, at least]. Maybe what I really wanted was this misbehaviour to end, and for the relationship to be repaired.

We finally reached a point of communication where the unjustified contradictions, the lies and the twisting of the truth was replaced by apologies and kind words, but I'm not sure whether I was just being humoured - this was the endgame. Having gut-wrenchingly lost my best friend, my lifelong companion, the love of my life - albeit a whirlwind romance - I briefly thought that these words of contrition showed a willingness to try and fix the relationship. Alas, no... I was mistaken. She swallowed her pride privately, for my benefit, but to do so publicly was unthinkable for her.

She might not understand that I resorted to social media, because I have no sycophantic courtiers to prop up whatever ill-founded notions I want to believe - I have no "yes" men who tell me I'm right, even when they only know half the story. I've lived most of my life feeling isolated and alone. I couldn't be much more alone than now: estranged from my family for over 2 years and all my contact with my friends is through social media. When I'm not working, I have almost zero face-to-face human contact. Social media is the only place where my side of the story gets told. Social media is the only place where my friends can give me support, making me feel a little less isolated, alone, and vulnerable. It's easy to beat up a person who has nobody sticking up for them.

She's not a bully, unlike my ex-wife. She's a nice person and we were best friends. It's just that I became very fragile when I lost everything - my family, my regular social contact with friends, my job, my financial security. Her inflated ego brutally squashed what little security and happiness I had, as she foolishly boasted about being a public figure; a minor celebrity; at the centre of the universe.

There were periods of humility, and I thought we would get through the problems we'd had, but instead, she has thrown herself back into her career with some gusto, and I must satisfy myself with the sole and unintended benefit of now being at liberty to consider opportunities outside London.

I write this, largely driven by fear. Fear of being alone, but also knowing that loneliness and isolation are deadly. It's more fear of death - through suicide, obviously - that's caused me to write this today. I feel alone and I'm mourning the loss of that all-to-brief period where I felt I'd met my lifelong companion. It's taking longer to come to terms with and comprehend how it all fell apart so quickly, than one might intuitively believe would be necessary: to grieve for the loss and move on. Isolation breeds isolation, and I've had almost nobody to talk to about the breakup; nobody supporting me; nobody on my side.

Having learned from my mistakes of the past, I don't want to be with somebody, just because I'm afraid of being alone, but I had to write this today, because my last relationship was as close to perfect as I've ever imagined it possible to achieve... but yet it still ended, and it ended badly. I guess the lesson I learned is that there are really great girls out there, but there's going to be irreconcilable conflict where their delusions of grandeur unfortunately collide with a collapse in my own self-esteem.

Feeling as alone and isolated as I do - connected to the world almost exclusively through social media - makes it frighteningly easy to seriously consider suicide as an option. I think about a handful of people who regularly ask how I am, on Twitter and Facebook, and a friend who has helped me immensely with a number of practical matters: these are the fragile little hooks on which I hang, suspended over the precipice. Many suicides will be a result of a failed relationship, but the effect of my latest breakup was counter-intuitive: now I feel safe to discuss the complete collapse in my self-esteem, without somehow laying blame at the feet of my ex. I don't want people to feel responsible. I wouldn't kill myself to spite a person. I don't even want to die angry with the world.

My ex's productive output is out there in public and it causes me great pangs of pain, as it reminds me what I loved about her, but also I am able to see that I was damaging her career... an unwelcome distraction at a time when big opportunities were presenting themselves for her to demonstrate her very best work. "If you love them, let them go" is an oft-quoted platitude, and I wish I were able to claim in all honesty that I was acting so selflessly. In truth, it's more like "I can see that she's better off without me".

This is the seed of the suicidal: "the world is better off without me".

Tags: #suicide #relationships

This is a story about infidelity...

Yo ho ho and a bottle of Xanax. We're off to take a sailing trip across the Atlantic to New York. I'm nervous, but she's with me - she's also an experienced sailor - so I'm excited and I'm sure that between us we can manage the voyage. At first we are heading towards Dover. Why are we travelling East when we need to be sailing West? Then, we are becalmed and a fog descends. The water is glassy and flat and the sails flap uselessly. A road sign appears and it becomes apparent that we are in London, on a road. We are towing the yacht on a trailer. I rack my brains, trying to think of the best marina with a hoist to lift our yacht into the sea. I can't think straight.

This is a dream, obviously.

Next, I'm approaching a nightclub, skipping the queue outside and heading straight for the entrance. I present my left hand to the bouncer, who shines a torch on it. I brush past him so confidently, and he's not really paying attention, so he doesn't notice that I don't have an ink stamp that says I'm allowed in. Nobody challenges me. I go past the dance-floor and into another room. I notice somebody sucking on a glass tube with what looks like shards of gold, or maybe honeycomb, being ignited with a lighter. Then, an old schoolfriend wants to show me something he's making. He's pouring chemicals into a large jam jar. He's making shake-and-bake methamphetamine. The crystals aren't perfect shards of ice, but instead they're a milky mess. I know the drug will be potent, but the solvents and other chemicals used are deadly. I'm afraid, but also drawn to it, like a moth to a flame. Somebody has prepared some lines of a white powder; it's being passed around. I wake up.

My doctor warned me that my new depression treatment - California rocket fuel - would lead to vivid dreams, but I've always had a lot of dreams.

In a way, my new dreams are better than the old ones. When I used to dream before, they were basically all the same: I have some supercrack and I'm trying to find a private place to take it, but every time I think I'm safe from intrusion, and I'm about to snort a line, somebody interrupts me. Then begins a stressful game of hide-and-seek where I'm trying to escape the voyeurs who wish to intrude on my private drug use. I never actually manage to get any drugs up my nose before I wake up.

Of course, drugs are still my mistress. I've got a virtually unlimited supply of opiates, in the form of tramadol and codeine. I've got stacks of benzodiazepines, in the form of diazepam and Xanax. I've got loads of Z-drugs in the form of zopiclone and zolpidem. I've got pregablin, venlafaxine and mirtazepine. I've got Viagra and Cialis. None of these chemicals seem to make the blindest bit of difference to my depression, and they're certainly not my drug of choice: supercrack.

I go to the chemist, and I have to give two signatures, because they're giving me medications that are controlled substances - they're illegal to possess without a prescription. I'm handed a carrier bag that's bulging with boxes packed full of blister strips containing capsules full of chemicals, or pills that have been pressed into certain shapes and sizes, with numbers and letters imprinted on them. Everything is so colourful. If I lose a pill on the floor by accident, I can identify exactly what it is.

I get confused at night, as I swallow 6 pregablin capsules (white with black lettering), 2 venlafaxine tablets (round and dark orange), 2 mirtazepine tablets (small lozenge shaped, light orange), 2 zolpidem tablets (tiny white lozenges) and a Xanax (an oblong with "XANAX" imprinted on one side). Sometimes I also take a zopiclone if I can't sleep (round white tablet). When my leg was in pain, I would also take 2 co-codamol with 30mg of codeine in each tablet (large white lozenges) and 2 tramadol capsules (green and yellow). Trying to remember if I took everything, and make sure I don't take anything twice, is quite difficult. I'm almost at the point where I should prepare all my tablets and check I've got everything before I greedily gulp them down. I can now swallow 6 tablets at once, easily.

My real mistress, and the beast that's out to kill me - supercrack - is tamed at the moment. I know that a lapse would be disastrous in my financially precarious situation, but I'm also so doped up that my libido and craving for supercrack is under control... for now. I'm not a superstitious person, but I feel like I'm tempting fate just writing these words.

I don't bother keeping a tally of how long I've been 'clean'. It's a ridiculous idea. If a person quits one thing, they start doing something else. A former gambling addict might become obsessed with fitness and go to the gym 7 days a week. A smoker who quits will probably start eating more, to compensate for the loss.

It might seem logical that the longer you're addicted to something, the harder it will be to quit and stay 'clean' but nobody seems to realise that the more times you quit and have periods of abstinence, the better you get at quitting and resisting temptation. Medically, the binge & quit cycle of drug taking is the most damaging, because the binges are so extreme: days and days without sleep or food, and huge doses of really harmful drugs, when your poor body has just about recovered and was starting to get back to normality.

Of course, the really harmful stuff is to relationships. She doesn't mention it very often, but she's worried about the next time I just disappear off the face of the Earth, and reappear skinny, sleep-deprived and suffering from all the nasty side effects of supercrack: paranoia, obsessive-compulsive behaviour and panic attacks; not to mention tachycardia, malignant hyperthermia and rhabdomyolysis. I'm no stranger to hospitals and psych wards.

If you meet me in person, I seem polite, well presented, somewhat smart and certainly confident and self-assured. I can make smalltalk and feign interest in other people's lives. I remember the tiny details that people tell me, which I can see are important to them, so that I can bring them up if ever there's a lull in conversation; an uncomfortable silence. There's no chance you'd peg me as a 'druggie' or a 'stoner' or a 'junkie'. I take perverse pleasure in contradicting and confounding the stereotypes.

Despite my ability to confidently bullshit my way through life, I do wonder if I'm as seriously sick as my doctors tell me I am. They can't make their mind up whether I have treatment-resistant major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder or some dual or triple diagnosis of all of them, plus the substance abuse, of course.

On top of the chemical cocktails, there's a bottle of wine every night, just like every other middle-class professional. Lots of people would say that alcohol is part of the problem, but the last time I quit I quickly went hypomanic and lost my contract. Seems to be the story of my life: losing my contracts through ill-health. All the evidence points to chronic illness that makes me unfit to work, but my confident and upbeat attitude - plus my employability - has got me stuck in a groundhog day loop, where I work enough to pay the bills for a year, but then implode spectacularly and find myself without gainful employment, yet again.

Undoubtedly, my affair with supercrack wreaks havoc across every area of my life, but what about the depression? What about the hypomania? What about the fact I see everything in black and white, and I either love you or hate you? Even when I'm 'well' and functioning, I've still gotta be right: intellectual pride and arrogance.

I've committed to a new regimen of antidepressants, for the first time in years, so maybe my mood will improve if I can keep taking the pills regularly for 4 to 6 weeks... then we'll see if these blunt instruments of brain manipulation actually fucking work for once.

Meanwhile, money pours out of my bank account and the end of the runway gets ever closer, but the wheels of the aeroplane are still on the tarmac. If I can't psych myself up to overcome the depression, stress and anxiety enough to hide my problems and tackle the arduous task of getting another contract, I'm fucked. The house of cards will collapse quicker than you can say "fuck my life".

It's remarkable how much time I spend thinking about setting my affairs in order: making sure my life insurance pays out to my sister, making sure I've left instructions so that friends who've helped me out get repaid, making sure I've thrown away everything that's of no value, making sure that I've listed the details of all my bank accounts and creditors, making sure I've left enough money in my company so that my accountant can wind up the business and he gets paid, and also making sure that at least a teeny bit of my legacy is preserved: I've written a novel and this blog has about 600,000 words, plus photos. I always said I wanted to leave a smoking gun, in case anybody wanted to investigate how stress - mainly financial worries - can destroy a person and drive them to suicide. My biggest fear is being written off with a simple throwaway label: "mentally ill" or "substance abuse" or whatever... things are never as simple as that.

While most people are planning summer holidays and extended weekend breaks over the bank holiday weekend, I'm paralysed by the ever-approaching end of the runway, combined with debilitating stress and depression. Things look straightforward, because I've made life look like a walk in the park so far, but in fact I'm just very good at hiding the deteriorating situation, when my back's against the wall. Just because I can rescue myself in the nick of time, doesn't mean I can always do it, forever. I feel physically sick at the thought of the effort involved in doing what I do, all over again, even though it's a well-practiced tried-and-trusted formula.

Time just gets frittered away, which is fine when you're getting your regular salary and you spend most of your time at your desk just counting down to the weekend or your next holiday, but when you're in my situation, in a way, I'm dying. How do you think you'd feel if you were left penniless, homeless and with a bunch of vultures trying to take the clothes off your back? How do you think you'd feel if you know you can make everything alright again, if only you were well enough to work, but you feel sick and the thought of going back to the office caused you severe stress, anxiety and paralysed you; unable to cope or deal with the situation?

Tick tock goes the clock, and it doesn't stop. You have to run just to stand still. This is why it's so attractive to run away with my mistress and pretend my problems don't exist: escapism.

I want to escape this invisible prison.

Tags: #drugs #depression #suicide #mentalhealth #career

This is a story about getting old and fat...

Are you getting a belly? Does your tummy wobble? What about bingo wings? Trousers feeling a bit tight? Can't get into that old outfit you used to wear? Try The Supercrack Diet!

If you are already in the pro-athlete body fat range of 1 to 3% body fat, do not try The Supercrack Diet, because your muscles will be used to keep you alive, and the myoglobin contained in the muscles will be released into your bloodstream and cause your kidneys to fail. You will stop urinating and your heart will fail because of elevated potassium that can't be flushed from your body. Basically, you'll die.

Do you enjoy drinking the best part of two bottles of wine a night, eating runny camembert and other high-fat soft cheeses, cooking everything in butter and goose fat, having chips and other deep-fried delicacies to accompany every meal and believe that any meal can be improved with lashings of cream? Do you have cupboards full of crisps and biscuits where you go to for regular snacks in-between meals? Do you have a second stomach, for dessert, and a third stomach, for cheese?

At the ripe old age of 37 and injured (foot/ankle and wrist) I've noticed that my eating and drinking habits combined with my complete lack of exercise, are now causing me to gain weight. Putting on the suit I wore for TechStars demo day in 2011, I noticed that I could barely do the button up. When I went to get a new suit - admittedly straight after Christmas - my waist had grown not one, but two sizes!

Obviously, I don't want to be a fattie, so I invented The Supercrack Diet.

The diet goes like this:

1. Obtain Supercrack

2. Take Supercrack

3. Repeat step 2 until desired weight loss has been achieved

4. Present yourself at your nearest hospital Accident & Emergency department if you are experiencing one of the many deadly side effects* of The Supercrack Diet

* Side effects requiring hospital treatment may include psychosis, heart damage or irregular rhythm, poor co-ordination, injuries resulting from poor co-ordination, injuries resulting from psychosis, tachycardia, panic attacks, hyperventilation, malignant hyperthermia, rhabdomyolysis, acute kidney failure.

You might notice the lack of any steps between 2 and 3. That's because you're not going to eat anything. You might drink a little, but often not. You're definitely not going to sleep. You may find yourself quite physically active, especially when psychosis sets in and 'they' are out to get you - this is the exercise that you should have been doing, except now you have the added motivation of people who are out to get you. You might find yourself climbing into attics without using a ladder, picking up heavy pieces of furniture and trying to balance them in improbable places and generally rearranging your environment - all of this burns a lot of calories.

Something that you should know about supercrack: it doesn't contain any calories so you can eat as much as you want!*

* If you eat more than half a gram, you may lose control of your motor cortex and be rendered immobile, or your heart may simply explode from a sudden blood pressure increase. Hospitalisation will be necessary. Do not eat more than half a gram at any one sitting. The recommended maximum daily dose is 0.005 grams. You will need laboratory grade scales.

So-called 'malignant' hyperthermia is where you are hot and sweating profusely, just like when you're at the gym. The Supercrack Diet will give you so-called 'malignant' hyperthermia, without you having to move a muscle, except your heart, which will be at 100% of your MHR (Maximum Heart Rate). Remember not to go to the gym while doing The Supercrack Diet, or your heart will be damaged irreparably. Don't worry about that 'malignant' thing... they'll explain that to you in hospital.

If you have high blood pressure, you might be surprised to learn that regularly doing The Supercrack Diet can cause your heart to enlarge (called athlete's heart) and arteries to grow. The net result is that your blood pressure and even your resting heart rate can be remarkably improved. My resting heart rate was 41 and I had "the lowest blood pressure I've ever seen in somebody who's conscious" according to a doctor who examined me. However, you could also damage your heart or die. Just concentrate on the upsides.

Other similar diets can cause teeth grinding and a tendency to pick at your own skin (called 'tweaking') but The Supercrack Diet does not have these undesirable side effects. Just the addiction. And the damage to your relationships, work and property. And all the time and money you'll lose while you're dieting.

Diets such as The Crack Diet, Diet Coke[aine] and The Meth Diet can be very expensive, costing £250 a day or more. You won't believe how cheap The Supercrack Diet is. 200 days of dieting can be purchased for less than £30. The price you pay is not for the supercrack though. The price you pay is in the damaging addiction. You may find that you want to diet more regularly than work, education, socialising and normal healthy activities permit.

Experienced dieters may find that vast quantities of tranquillisers are the only way to curtail a diet, several days after they had originally intended to stop. Also, a stock of isotonic fluids, amino acids, high protein and glucose drinks, is good to have on hand for the lengthy recovery period. Expect crying, severe depression and suicidal thoughts.

It's good to be thin though, right?

Tags: #drugs

This is a story about nonlinear progression...

There's my bedroom door. As you can see, you can bolt it closed, which is a security feature I added myself. Later, I decided to slide a knife behind the wooden surround and screw that into the wood that surrounds the door. Then I decided that a second knife was probably needed, in case the first one snapped as the blade flexed. Then I decided that I needed something else and finally arrived at the decision to dismantle one of my crutches and part of my bed, so that I had a wooden slat and an aluminium tube, which in theory provided some kind of extra security.... I don't know. I'd been doing this for hours by this point, completely exhausted.

What you're really looking at is the mind, after losing five or six nights of sleep, skipping fifteen to eighteen meals, and being confined to one room, with all the windows obscured.

Who would want to come and do me any harm? Well, when you attempt to balance a crutch and a bed slat on a door handle at 4am - in total darkness - I imagine anybody within earshot would probably want to see me lynched.

I used to go and hide in the bathroom, because it had a proper lock, but then my flatmate unlocked it from outside with a butter knife. Luckily I was right by the door so I locked it again. He was only checking if I was alive, but it's strange how nobody talks to you when you descend into one of these periods of isolation.

In my mind, the lock on my balcony door had been picked. Then, the large glass patio door had been noiselessly slid open, and men clad in black wearing stealth shoes had been able to cross my wooden floor without alerting me to their presence. Meanwhile, more men clad in black, had entered my spare bedroom through a window. These men removed the 'security' features from my front door - for example, a hammer that falls on the floor if the door is opened, which is a kind of improvised intruder alarm - allowing more of their team to enter my flat and prepare to batter down my bedroom door.

Hiding in bathrooms is awful. The floor is freezing tiles and that's about it. There's plenty to drink and you can answer the call of nature, but other than that, it's just cold and boring. I spend half my time barricading the bathroom door and the other half looking through the crack under the door, to see if I can see the men in black in my bedroom. It's a really narrow crack and you can hardly see anything, so you start to imagine that you've seen things. This is why I've stopped hiding in bathrooms.

I have a bed that lifts up so you can store stuff underneath it. If you didn't know, you'd just think it was regular Ikea bed. I actually slept under there for 8 hours or so. It's fucking roasting and I'm sure there's inadequate air recirculation, but I seemed to survive.

Every time I get so hungry or thirsty or just fed up with the bullshit of it all, I take down the barricades and say "come on then, men in black, do your worst!". Then I usually just collapse in bed and sleep for hours and hours. Nothing bad has happened in my home, ever. The police have kicked the bedroom door in a couple of times at my parents', which is what triggered this whole paranoia. That's my parents for you: they'd rather have a door smashed off its hinges than talk to their son. I've tried the basics, like saying "use your words" but that's obviously too much effort for them.

That's the thing about paranoia: it doesn't come from nowhere. There are seeds and they grow into nightmares. Doesn't it creep you out, the idea of some twisted sick voyeur watching you while you take a shit or even just sleeping peacefully in bed? Doesn't it creep you out, the idea of your bedroom becoming a viewing gallery, where people come and go as they please, to watch whatever you're up to?

I haven't written in a while, and that's because I'd given up hope. I'd given up hope that my foot/ankle could be fixed and I could stop the massive doses of painkillers, that were making me so doped up I couldn't work. I'd given up hope that I had enough runway left, to be able to get another IT contract, especially after HSBC lowered my overdraft limit by the best part of £2,000. None of the sums added up. None of the calculations could show that there was a way that I could make my money last until I got some more income.

Then, a windfall from an investment I was managing on somebody else's behalf. A gift from a kind and caring person. Some help getting my spare bedroom ready to rent out to a flatmate - it had been left in an awful state by the last guy, who owes me approximately £6,000 - which will bring deposit money and cut my burn rate by half. Finally, I managed to get a bridging loan, which is getting paid into my account today. Turns out my credit rating is pretty awesome. One of my non-HSBC credit cards just had its limit doubled, so I can live on that to some extent. My interest bill is awful, but put in the context of what I can earn as an IT contractor, it don't mean shit.

I'm crashing at my girlfriend's so that I'm in a different environment. Also, because there are workmen replacing the planking on my balcony, but the amount of noise they're making, you'd think they were demolishing the entire block of flats.

The lounge/diner/kitchen massive room in my flat - with patio doors onto the balcony at one end and a dual-aspect panoramic view of the River Thames - is fucking awesome, but when I'm depressed I only go in there to get more unhealthy snacks, which I take back to my stinky bedroom, with the curtains drawn, to watch endless amounts of on-demand TV.

I don't like it when alcoholics describe themselves as 'in recovery' when they've been teetotal for years and years. I'm 'in recovery' in that I lost at least 14kg in body weight, since my peak (although that was somewhat skewed by fluid retention). I lost more sleep and skipped more meals than you'd ever believe. I need to recover. I need to catch up on sleep. I need nutrients and to allow my body to lay down a bit of fat. I need to have some time where I'm not worried about men in black kicking the door in, and where I can have sex with my girlfriend without worrying that some sicko voyeur is watching through a tiny gap in the curtains.

Working so hard, with such enormous effort and stress, to get out of hospital and get to the first day of my new job, was one of the most difficult, challenging and against-the-odds things I've ever done. I did it. I fucking did it. Then, to have it snatched away was a cruelty that broke me. It broke me. It broke my will to live. It broke my will to keep trying. I had to hide from the world for an entire week, just in shock, unable to allow myself to think, because my thoughts would have turned straight to suicide. I had to get through a week without a single bit of thinking, otherwise I was dead; it hurt me that badly and left me in such a shitty situation.

Since then, I've been careless with my life and everything in it. I've got an amazing girlfriend, but I risked losing her. I've got a super helpful friend who's always there for me, but I risked pushing them away. I know people are monitoring the situation through this blog and social media, and would act if they were worried, perhaps to send the police round to find my corpse. It'd be a better idea to just reach out and ask if I'm OK and say you're worried, using any of the tech communication channels we have - SMS, iMessage, Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger, Twitter DM... the list is endless.

My long-suffering girlfriend ended up speaking with somebody I know through my blog and Facebook, because he was quite rightly concerned. I'm really touched when I find out about these little webs of people who are like a safety net. Nets have holes and I might fall through one - as I have fallen through many of the cracks in life - but it does feel like I have more to live for, knowing that people care enough to speak to each other; share information; discuss what to do.

I'm now admiring my newly flat stomach (but seriously, don't do the supercrack diet) and feeling a little bit more relaxed about having some runway to get back to work once my foot/ankle is fixed... although ironically, I stopped taking the painkillers, but I broke my wrist, so go figure.

You'd seriously hate me if you knew everything about my charmed existence. I left my apartment which faces West - a view of almost every famous London landmark: Shard, London Eye, Tower Bridge, St Paul's Cathedral, Walkie Talkie, Cheesegrater, Gherkin, BT Tower etc. etc. - and I'm now recovering in my girlfriend's apartment which faces East, so I can look at the cable cars going over the Thames, the O2 Centre (a.k.a. the Millennium Dome), the Cutty Sark and Royal Naval College and other parts of beautiful old Greenwich.

I'm off most of the meds now. Coming off a high dose of Tramadol, I wondered why I was itchy, nauseous and sweaty, and realised I was junk sick. Opiate withdrawal ain't that bad really.

I've had an MRI scan of my foot/ankle, and on Friday somebody is going to test the nerve wiring from my foot all the way up my leg, to check for any broken connections. Then, there'll be another consultation and possibly an operation. Things are going quite quick because the NHS outsourced me to a private hospital.

Just need to remember not to get too relaxed at the moment!

Tags: #addiction #london #career #relationships

This is a story about the right to bear arms...

Defence budgets are soaring. The UK is spending £205 billion to upgrade the nuclear deterrent. The annual NHS budget is half that amount. We could give the NHS an extra £350 million per week, for over 11 years, instead of spending our money on weapons of mass destruction.

There are two vans full of armed police parked outside Canary Wharf station, every single working day. I pass them on my way to work. Now, there are also mounted police.

Our foreign policies are abhorrent. The rhetoric used by politicians and the media has whipped up a frenzy of nationalism, xenophobia, bigotry and racism. I used to be proud that Britain was a diverse and inclusive nation, but now I'm embarrassed to discover that there is a marginal majority who have this crazy idea about raising the drawbridge and lowering the portcullis: fortress England.

I saw a meme the other day that asked what the hell is wrong with you if you're so afraid of ISIS that you're not prepared to grant asylum to women & children who are fleeing ISIS. It's a damn good point well made.

The great success that is hidden in the decline of the British empire, is that we managed to leave things in relatively good order. The partition of India and Pakistan was mostly successful, except for one stupid idiot who had no idea about the Kashmir region, but drew the border anyway. Britain is still on good terms with both India and Pakistan and I have no problem getting a visa to visit either country. I've been to India many times and they've embraced English as an official language. The railway system and a lot of other bureaucratic systems are run exactly as they were under British rule.

Again, when Britain left the Middle East, Gulf States and North Africa, after World War II, it was a masterclass in diplomacy and how to divide and rule areas that would otherwise be torn apart by internecine strife. Yes, it's true that dictators were installed. However, before the Gulf War, there was a thriving middle class and excellent infrastructure, not only in Iraq but throughout the whole Middle East. The standard of living in Libya was amazing. Bashar al-Assad brought the Internet to Syria in the mid-nineties, and Assad was somebody who the British had excellent diplomatic ties with: he was one of our best friends in the region.

Britain's policy had always been to rule through diplomacy and bureaucracy. Britain's policy was not one of invasion, conquest, occupation, arms races and domination through sheer military might. The reason Britain had a huge empire is because we are a mercantile nation, who negotiated many trade deals and established much of the flow of goods over land and sea that we see today. Britain didn't want war. Britain wanted to be friends with everybody, so they could trade with the world.

Now, with the American 'shock and awe' tactics, with SCUD missiles raining down on innocent civilians from hundreds of miles away, with no warning, we're fucking hated. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine not even hearing the approach of an aircraft, seeing the falling bomb and having a second to duck and cover? Can you imagine you're sitting there watching TV, and the next thing you know your house is rubble and your whole family have been killed or maimed?

The American occupation, or simply their military presence, in the Middle East was highly offensive and threatening. America likes to flex its military muscle. America likes to boast about its cutting-edge 'defence' technology... which we all know means offensive weapons.

Where's the fucking bravery of warfare, if you're controlling a drone from some air-conditioned office type place, in a building in America, blowing up people in a country thousands of miles away? How that fuck is that being a brave soldier?

And so, we saw the birth of asymmetrical and guerrilla warfare. What we call insurgency is simply the only way that the occupied nations stand any chance of fighting back against the invading forces. The people who we call insurgents are really freedom fighters: fighting for the freedom from invasion and occupation by the country with the world's largest 'defence' budget - America.

I'm going to keep putting 'defence' inside inverted commas like that, because it's not fucking defence. Those weapons get used for offensive purposes far more than for defensive purposes.

The top selling guns in America are hand guns. The top gun retailer is Walmart... we know them as ASDA supermarket in the UK. The top selling bullets are rounds that go in hand guns. What the actual fuck? Surely 1 bullet equals 1 dead person, if you're using a hand gun. I can't imagine that anybody goes hunting deer with a hand gun, can you?

This culture of fetishising deadly weapons - brandishing them and carrying them on the public streets - has become ubiquitous. Giving guns to every ordinary policemen and women. Encouraging people to own a gun at home and introducing laws like stand-your-ground have caused a massive spike in the number of guns and bullets sold, and the number of people who are killed in shootings.

My fear is that Britain moves closer and closer to the American model of foreign and domestic policy.

I would hate it if our police were all armed with guns. No policeman should be judge, jury and executioner. I would hate it if private citizens were allowed to own handguns, which serve no purpose other than to shoot people. The self defence argument crumbles to dust if you can keep guns out of everybody's hands. I would bet you that 99 out of 100 burglaries in the UK are committed by people who are not carrying guns.

The more the rhetoric and the hate ramps up, and the more our strong historical positive diplomatic relationships with many leaders in the Middle East deteriorate, as well as the whole region descending into a chaotic power struggle, the more that Britain becomes a proxy target for the many many people who hate America, because America killed their children, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, parents, cousins, friends and countless other innocent victims of cowardly missile, bomb and drone strikes.

"Don't shoot until you can see the whites of their eyes" they used to say. Soldiers used to have to live with the horror of knowing they'd taken the life of another human being. Now, your drone controller hops in his car and drives home to his family, at the end of his shift. He has no idea what kind of carnage and destruction was unleashed in the aftermath of his drone strike. He has no idea whether the intelligence was correct, or if he just murdered a bunch of innocent people.

The American way of doing things is not making me feel safe. Donald Trump does not make me feel safe. Border controls and slamming the door in the face of people fleeing persecution and war, does not make me feel safe. Dropping bombs on Syria does not make me feel safe. The 'special relationship' with America does not make me feel safe.

We belong to Europe, and we owe it to our former colonies to maintain peace and stability. We are fucking up two of our greatest postwar achievements, and letting America ruin world peace.

I don't feel safe.

Tags: #terrorism #london